Friday, April 12, 2013

I'm at PatCon 3 at Chicago-Kent (follow live tweets at #PatCon3), where so far we have heard Judge Linn expressing skepticism about the Supreme Court's role in patent law, a panel of in-house counsel describing their views on the patent system's biggest problems, and a plenary session with Mark Lemley (arguing against jury trials for patent validity), James Malackowski (on IP markets), and David Abrams (on patent value and citations). Below are (very) rough notes on one of the highlights of the day, a debate between Judge Posner and Professor Epstein:

Monday, April 8, 2013

Daniel Hemel and I just posted a new draft paper, Beyond the Patents-Prizes Debate, which I'll be presenting on Saturday at PatCon 3 at Chicago-Kent. The article develops a new taxonomy of innovation policies that highlights the overlooked benefits of tax incentives for research activities. We would love feedback and suggestions; feel free to email us at the addresses listed at the top of the PDF. Here is the current abstract:

It might seem strange to have a list of classic design patent scholarship that consists largely of articles that do not really focus on design patents. But the literature is sparse. And even if it wasn’t, these articles would still be important because they each address issues that we are still debating today—including the fundamental question of how (or if) we should protect designs using intellectual property law.